The first of September 1939 is a date that injured me with a wound that will
never heal. It will accompany me to my last day. I remember the entrance of
Hitler's soldiers with their arrogant, hobnailed boots into our city of Dąbrowa
Górnicza, and I was still a young man who had yet to savor the taste of
life. They came to us at great haste since we were located not far from the
German border.

Their first act was to make us wear a yellow armband with a Star of David on
our left arm and they termed this a mark of disgrace. They
confiscated Jewish shops and appointed commissars to run Jewish businesses. In
the plant belonging to my uncle Abram-Jakob Klajn, may the Lord revenge his
blood, they appointed a cruel commissar to run the plant. He immediately fired
all the Jewish workers who had invested their funds and energy into the
building of the factory.

The first victim in our family was my uncle Szmul Klajn, may the Lord revenge
his blood, the younger brother of Abram the engineer. One Friday, in February
1941, the Gestapo appeared his house, claiming, as it were, that he had been
reading underground newspapers and they arrested him. Showing proof that this
claim was false did not help him. He was taken to Myslowice, tortured there and
finally taken to Auschwitz. He was murdered and his ashes and blood stained
clothes were sent in a parcel to his wife.

Abram Jakob KlajnThe engineer of the Klajn brother's factory
at an exhibition in Poznan

At the end of 1941 there were additional victims in our family: Bilski, Pitman
and Bartek. Bilski, who was an engineer by profession, was the son-in-law of
Abram-Jakob, the factory manager, was married to his daughter Genia. We all
lived together in a house on Lukasinskiego Street and we heard how the Gestapo
came to arrest him. Pitman was the store-man and Bartek was the chief
bookkeeper. All the efforts made by the family to release him were to avail.
They were severely tortured, cruelly beaten, transferred to various camps and
they finally murdered them and their ashes were sent to their families, in
order to further torture the bereaved and distressed families.

When my uncles, Abram-Jakob and Wolf, saw the bereavement passing through our
family, they decided to dispose of the factory that they had built with the
sweat of their brows, and abandon it to Hitler's thieves. Engineer Abram-Jakob
went to live with his daughter Genia and found work as a foreman in a private
workshop and his brother, Wolf, worked as a manager and work instructor for
young boys in the metalworking profession. As I was told, he stayed in the
ghetto till it was liquidated, and later went through hell in Auschwitz, but
stayed alive thanks to his expertise in the metalworking profession. I met him
in Germany after the war in the city of Lindsborg. He went to live in Israel in
1953 and he tried, once again, to start a factory but his strength and deserted
him and he passed away.

Engineer Abram-Jakob hid out in a Christian home in the region. He was informed
on and was murdered in the street. I received this information from
acquaintances, in the work camp in Gliwice, who were in contact with Christian
citizens, who supplied us with all the news of what was happening at home.

My father, Berysz of blessed memory, worked as a foreman in the steel wire
painting section in the Klajn brother's factory. He worked there till the
ghetto was liquidated, and more than once they wanted to remove him from the
factory but they couldn't find someone with his standard of professionalism to
take his place.

In the meantime, the Nazis continued their unrestrained frenzy in Dąbrowa. They
carried out searches and hunts after young Jews in the streets. They starved,
beat and tortured those that they found and told their families that they were
being sent to labor camps for six weeks only. However, in the end they were
murdered. How did they entice our parents with deceptions! How did they put our
alertness to sleep! Why couldn't we see that they were planning to mercilessly
destroy us!

[Page 377]

My older brother, Mosze, may the Lord revenge his blood, returned home broken
and depressed from the labor camp, but he was immediately captured and was sent
to the Kittlitz Gröditz, and there was cruelly murdered by a Kapo[1]. By
chance, my cousin was there and witnessed this murder but could do nothing to
save him.

We became the cheapest labor force of the Germans. They could weaken our
strength to the state of helplessness. What didn't they use us for: paving
roads, construction, arms factories, feeding us with a little weak soup and
thus we worked, and those showing signs of weakness were sent to Auschwitz to
be killed.

Next to a mass grave (Mietek Krajcer is standing)

Our will to live was so strong that we fell for any deception or promise that
we wouldn't be set to a labor camp, but this didn't help; labor camps sprang up
and labor camps were destroyed, those that worked for the war effort paid a
monthly tax that was called a special tax, that gave them the
deception of security, but when the production output decreased they were sent
to extermination camps.

In 1941 we were separated from the Christian population, as pariahs, so that
they could persecute us more vigorously. Nazi Germany did everything so that
there would many ways to depress and humiliate us, to conceal and erase any
characteristics of humanity created in God's image. We could only walk in
streets meant for Jews, we were not allowed to come in contact with Christians
or walk in the main streets. Libel followed libel. Those caught
transgressing trading in food, or more correctly, in coffee or a
loaf of bread  were arrested immediately and sent to extermination camps.

In the summer of 1942, in the month of August, the Nazis assembled all the Jews
from the region of Sosnowiec, Będzin, Dąbrowa and nearby towns, in special
locations, in order to stamp their identity cards. The Jews of Dąbrowa were
assembled next to the kehila [Jewish community] building, in a lot
on Polna Street. Representatives of the kehila ordered all those
who had turned up to wear festive clothing and wear the little jewelry that
they still had: This is only to report to have identity cards
stamped  the kehila leaders claimed.

It was a bitter and impetuous day, an act of deception only the devil could
invent against helpless people, lacking even the minimum means of defending
themselves: the Nazis appeared, in violent anger, with the cruelty of savages,
created two lines of people, those to be deported and those to be released. The
windows of heaven opened and heavy rain began pouring down to the ground, the
people were soaked, and the devil sent the cream of the adults of the community
to be exterminated. They still left the youth under 30 years of age alone,
since the Nazis still needed the manpower.

When our turn came, all the family stood together. My father, of blessed
memory, showed them a security certificate with many stamps. They were shocked
to see a high-ranking Jewish workingman and they didn't believe that there were
these types amongst us, though Jewish Dąbrowa was blessed with people like
this. Luckily, we were released. During this same selection, the
wife of Abram Klajn was taken but was released through the intervention of the
kehila, since at that time, Abram-Jakob worked in the
kehila. The Najszteter family was also taken in this deportation,
the sister of the manager and his brother-in-law. The deportees were loaded on
trucks, wearing their festive clothes, cramped so badly that it was difficult
to breath, the children and the babies were thrown in as if they were inanimate
objects and they were killed in their parents' arms. Thus the death convoy
moved off, watched by the remnant.

Thanks to my father who was a foremen and an expert in his profession, I
remained working with him for some months. On my way to work, I heard weeping
coming from the orphaned homes and there was no consolation, the Nazis were not
satisfied with these deportations and asked the kehila for more
groups to be deported.

At the beginning of 1943 the ghetto was closed, and on the 6th of March 1943
all the employees were commanded to report. On Friday an order came and the
following day, Saturday, we all reported. I was also taken. We were taken to
Sosnowiec and there we worked in a building camp. My younger brother worked in
a kehila workshop and my brother-in-law, Dimansztajn, was employed
in a steel wire factory for a German commissar.

[Page 378]

All of us were taken to the work camps in Sosnowiec. The camp was dismantled by
order of the Nazi, Lindner, and we were transferred to Gliwice. Luckily, I
found a German craftsman who still had a spark of compassion in him and he
employed me in his plant, in exchange he took care of supplying me with news
from home and told me that my father was still working in the steel wire
factory. When the ghetto was destroyed the small remnant of Jews in Dąbrowa was
also destroyed.

In Gliwice, I was together with Mr. Zilberszac who is now in Israel, Natan
Strzegowski, Przerowicz and Lech Luksenburg. We stayed in the camp till the
17th of January 1945 until we were released by the Russian army that was
progressing westward and had conquered regions nearby Krakow and Auschwitz.

The Auschwitz camp was vacated of people, the Germans dragged us from camp to
camp, starved us but they needed us as manpower to be exploited till the very
end, and luckily they were not given the opportunity to do this and their plans
were not carried out. On the 25th of April 1945 I was released in Germany, in
Immendingen Barden. In the summer of 1947, I reached Israel.

The date of the 1st of September 1939 on which the Holocaust of European Jewry
began and the annihilation of my parents home, in particular, will be etched on
my heart. I will continue to remember and remind of the evil carried out by the
German Nazis.

__________

Although the origin of the term is not fully known, the word kapo
probably came from the Latin capo, meaning head. It was probably
introduced into Dachau by Italian workers in the 1930s. During World War II, in
popular language, kapo became a generic term for all inmate (prisoner)
functionaries. return

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